


Memory over Magic

by Jedibrarian



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jedibrarian/pseuds/Jedibrarian
Summary: Blackwall traverses the Fade.
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Lavellan
Kudos: 7





	Memory over Magic

He’d heard templar abilities described as a shoring-up of the Veil; magic, it was said, couldn’t stick to anything so aggressively real. That made a certain sense. He didn’t take lyrium, and was certain that the Maker did not favor him, but he had his own means of anchoring himself in the present and the physical. What could be more concrete than meeting another being’s blood and bones with your own?

He remembered when he’d cut and hauled in bales of twigs to feed the harts her clan had sent, who were starving on a horse’s ration of mash and hay. How he’d been called to the stables, had gathered himself for a reprimand, and found a stammering, shining-eyed Herald instead. How she’d clasped his hand and her lips had found the one uncalloused spot on the palm, inerrant and devastating as an iron broadhead through a visor slit.

He remembered the end to hours of anxious waiting, when they’d found her in the pass outside of Haven, and awe-filled voices repeated that she’d clawed her way out of a nest of demons and most of a mile through waist-high snow. How they’d handed him a too-light, shiver-wracked bundle of blankets to warm. How, runny-nosed and slurring through rattling teeth, she’d buried her face in the unarmored gap between his jaw and collar and the fire had seemed superfluous in comparison to what flared in his chest.

Now, retracing the footsteps of the magisters who despoiled the Golden City, with a host of demons wearing his own cursed face bearing down on them, he holds his memories in front of him as a shield. He thinks of the night after they’d returned from the Storm Coast, when he, ever the fool, had thought to force her to push him away. How, after the long wait in the cold, the heat of her mouth on his had seemed like the last warmth in the world. How when he’d moved to disengage he found himself snared, her fingers hooked through his doublet lacing, twined in the hair at his nape.

Tom Ranier snarls and lunges.

He remembers the flash of veilfire in her eyes. Remembers the words “I’m not letting you go,” falling on him with the force of a hammer blow and the finality of a binding spell.

His attacker draws up short for a fraction of a second. It is enough; He bisects him from collar to hip with a single swing.

His sword has barely completed his arc when another spectre rushes in. She spits like an angry cat, makes a wringing motion with both fists. He feels a weird, hair-raising rush as, at her command, the fabric of the Fade tears his simulacrum apart.

He reaches toward her. “Are you alright, love?” It’s out of his mouth before he can suppress it.

Surprise transmutes into a teeth-bared, fiercely-joyful smile under his hand. “Never better,” she says, to the Nightmare and to him.

He folds that moment up and tucks it under the shell of his cuirasse, against his heart. He senses that, in the days to come, he will need it.


End file.
